Arizona: The Wild Wild West and Route 66

Arizona: The Wild Wild West and Route 66
We had crossed the border into Arizona at the town of Parker, where the brilliant blue Colorado River made a welcome appearance at the edge of the Mojave Desert. This was where Mike and Joy lived and where we experienced our first taste of Arizonan hospitality.

After leaving Mike and Joy, we biked north towards Lake Havasu City, in the western part of the state. Lake Havasu City competes with the Death Valley for the hottest place in the United States, and the temperatures almost killed us. The ride was torturous, as there was even less shade here than in the Mojave Desert!!! In fact, there was a bit of shade for the first several miles, but then the canyons opened up into a wide desert with bushes even shorter than in the Mojave and there was absolutely no way to make shade with our blanket. We didn’t pass one single bush in over three hours of biking. All I wanted was to sit in the shade for a couple of minutes. I knew I couldn’t stop for much more than ten minutes, because I was afraid I would be too weak to start up again, but I was at least hoping for one tiny bush!!! It was 119-degrees and the road climbed steadily uphill the ENTIRE way until Lake Havasu. I was hungry and I had to pee, but it was so hot that I feared stopping, and so continued non-stop without a break for the entire 25 miles. I thought my legs were going to fall off and might never work again.

Doug, the first of our friendly road workers, had told us to come to his house if we passed through Lake Havasu, and there he was, come to pick us up and drive us to his house when we finally arrived in the city. We stayed in his air-conditioned house for two days with him and his wife Michelle, three young children, and dogs Taco and Bell. Doug took us for an awesome ride around the neighborhood in their sand dune buggy. Like many people out west, Doug and Michelle were like big kids with all their fun toys: the dune buggies, quads, a race car, a pool with a slide and colored lights, a jacuzzi, a fifth wheel (big camper van), and a “toy box” that carried the quads and other toys. Doug told us we could use their jacuzzi with candles and mood lighting for our “second honeymoon!”

We had been told that Arizona is the “Rebel State,” a place where anything goes and the place to come to if you want to hide out from the law. I believed it when Doug took us to the bedroom, where he showed us his stash of guns. He had DOZENS of guns in his lock box: hunting rifles, snipers, machine guns, hand guns, a laser gun with a flash light, and even a silencer! (which is actually legal in AZ). He wanted me to hold one, and I was nervous at first, but he took care in showing me they were unloaded. We tried out our best gangster moves and looks (I have to practice before trying out for the next gangsta movie!). I felt like I was in some Hollywood movie and that we were truly in the Wild Wild West!

From Doug and Michelle’s, we headed east on I40 towards Seligman and the most famous stretch of historical Route 66, America’s famous “Mother Road” or the “Main Street of America.” Route 66 is famous even in France, and Stephane was excited about biking it. The highway, which was renumbered in the mid-60s and which lost most of its traffic when the large super highways were built, was America’s first national highway. Completed in 1926, it saw thousands of migrants escape the Dust Bowl during the Depression in jalopies painted with “California or Bust” signs. During the migration westward, service towns sprang up, and that included motels, drive-ins, diners, and gas stations. It experienced a revival in the 50s and 60s. Never has a highway in America been so symbolic. Recalling days of a bygone era, “the good ‘ol days,” it inspires both patriotism and nostalgia in many Americans and even draws visitors from around the world.

Route 66 is filled with old-time roadside diners that still serve burgers and shakes the old-fashioned way, cheap, rundown motels, kitschy souvenir shops selling Rte. 66 memorabilia, “ghost town” mining outposts, and long-abandoned, 50s-style gas pumps. Locals still quench their thirst in the saloons, which sometimes have signs like, “No guns, partner.” Towns like Kingman, Hackberry, and Seligman are places where time seems to have stood still, and where people are stuck in an era five decades past its prime. It’s a blast from the past, where life from the 50s and 60s is glorified. Old Highway 66 gives a feel for what life was like when traveling by car was an adventure in and of iself, before Interstate superhighways and airplanes took over.

In between the small towns are miles upon miles of wide open spaces and big blue skies. The area is still hot and dry, but becomes more forested as we gain in altitude (the evenings are now cool enough to let us sleep well in our tent). Canyon country starts around the Hualapai Indian Reservation, where we had hoped to hike into the West Rim of the Grand Canyon and to several waterfalls below the rim. We also considered the area’s two other attractions, which are white-water rafting and walking over the newly-opened glass skywalk that juts out over the Grand Canyon’s western rim. We were disappointed, however, to find that exhorbitant fees are charged to enter the Indian Reservation, and the resulting prices were prohibitively expensive.

We continued on, but Stephane’s knee was starting to give him serious trouble. We decided to stop to rest it for a few days at the Grand Canyon Caverns campground, but found that it was closed for renovations. A woman who was working there offered to drive us to her house, in the nearby canyons, when her shift let out. It suited us well, as the nearest motel was very expensive and we would have been foolish to push on before Stephane’s knee healed. Janet had a second mobile home not far from where she lived with her husband, Richard. She warned us that it was in the mountains and that it had no stove, electricity, or water (most people out here did not have water – they transported huge water tanks to their houses in pick-up trucks). Boy, she wasn’t kidding, though, about it being isolated! We drove for 45 minutes on a variously ridged, bumpy-as-hell path and past three cow gates into the middle of nowhere. She lived in “cowboy country,” a dry, grassy land with bushes, backed by canyons that turn fiery orange-red in the evening. They have only a couple of year-round neighbors and the biggest backyard of anyone I have ever met. Janet says she loves it because living in the country is an adventure. The jeeps and trucks break down during the monsoon season, when the road turns to mud, and the locals sometimes have to walk for hours in order to get to work!

What Janet didn’t tell us, though, was that they had turned their motor home into a chicken house and a trash bin! Five chickens squawked behind wire netting, and there was chicken poop all over the house, including the mattress on the floor. Hay and other debris littered the floor and the house smelled like chickens! I actually sort of got used to the smell by the second day – probably a sign that I now smelled like chickens! But we were thankful for a chance to sleep in and rest our legs. By the third day, Stephane’s knee was feeling much better, and Janet drove us in her big yellow truck out of the canyon and to the nearest town, which was ten miles away.

Because we wanted to go to the Navajo Nation Fair, which was taking place in early September, we decided to head east towards the Navajo Nation and then back around to visit the Grand Canyon after the fair was over. So we headed past Flagstaff and past Winslow (made famous by the “Eagles” song) and past the large hole made famous by a meteor crater, until we hit more canyons and descended gradually downhill into the town of Holbrook, just outside the Petrified National Forest.

We stayed for two days with Nate, a tall, bearded, chain-smoking man with a twinkle in his eye. He and his friend Lynn drove us into the nearby canyons to see old Indian petroglyphs (very cool) and then we all drove around the Petrified Forest National Park the following day.